Better yet. Let's make a trade. I have a 8800GT lying around too. 8800GT + I pay you $25 for your GTX260, sean. Reduce some settings like AA/AF and in 95% of games you won't loose any eyecandy or performance and you gain $25!!!!

It's on par with GTX 260, it cost %50 more, with two six pin power connectors it also seems to draw more power and the only thing it has going for it is DX11 which isn't even fully implemented and probably won't be until next gen consoles, 2010 card? whats wrong with this picture?

Better yet. Let's make a trade. I have a 8800GT lying around too. 8800GT + I pay you $25 for your GTX260, sean. Reduce some settings like AA/AF and in 95% of games you won't loose any eyecandy or performance and you gain $25!!!!

this will probably be about the speed of the 260, just looking at the specs. It will have decent shader power but lack of ROP's memory bandwith and ram will cripple it pretty bad. At higher rez i wouldn't be surprised to see a 216 260 beat it.

this will probably be about the speed of the 260, just looking at the specs. It will have decent shader power but lack of ROP's memory bandwith and ram will cripple it pretty bad. At higher rez i wouldn't be surprised to see a 216 260 beat it.

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On Nvidia cards, shader power is the most important thing by far. Only seriously crippled cards show a performance difference based on other measurement other than shader power. And that's especially true for GTX4xx. If you look at charts the performance difference of all the released GTX4xx cards match exactly the shader power.

Anyway, at 675Mhz it won't matter too much if it has 4 ROPs less (24 vs 28). 28 is 16% higher than 24 and 675 Mhz is 17% higher clock. The two differences cancel each other. Same raster power and if anything the advantage goes for the 460 because of the higher clock (higher availability).

And memory bandwidth... except for extreme cases memory bandwidth has been irrelevant since 2007. And by that I mean that extreme memory overclocks (25%+ OC) barely offer a 2-3% advantage in real performance.

On Nvidia cards, shader power is the most important thing by far. Only seriously crippled cards show a performance difference based on other measurement other than shader power. And that's especially true for GTX4xx. If you look at charts the performance difference of all the released GTX4xx cards match exactly the shader power.

Anyway, at 675Mhz it won't matter too much if it has 4 ROPs less (24 vs 28). 28 is 16% higher than 24 and 675 Mhz is 17% higher clock. The two differences cancel each other. Same raster power and if anything the advantage goes for the 460 because of the higher clock (higher availability).

And memory bandwidth... except for extreme cases memory bandwidth has been irrelevant since 2007. And by that I mean that extreme memory overclocks (25%+ OC) barely offer a 2-3% advantage in real performance.

A GTX260 on DX10 and a GTS250 on DX9 perform exactly the same and both look the same. Make the trade, the 8800GT will be a better PhysX card...

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ok so it matches the 260, (which is what I said) but is slower than it by a bit because of the memory. Judging by how fast the 465 falls down as the resolution increases - compared to the 285 - i am going to venture and say that this will fall down in pretty much the same way. Hence, realistically it will lag behind in some games vs. a 260 216.

now... a 260 retailed for about $240 Nov-Dec of 2008 ... which is why this card is a fail. I mean srsly... same price, same power consumption, same performance... its basically a really power-hungry 5770 with less ram.

In both cases these little gems are only capable of running DirectX 9.0c level graphics. Now, obviously, there are some exceptions to this but that is all they are really. Until the consoles are able to implement DX10/DX11 level graphics this is pretty much going to be the situation we are in where we get a handful of titles that have these features while the majority of them are nothing more that ports of a title released on the console.

Myself, for various different reasons, I'm slowly moving towards a console for my gaming needs since I'm having a more and more diffcult time justifying spending the levels of money I am on a system that I get like maybe 3 games a year if I'm lucky that make it worth it. When I consider all of the other firearm related goodies I could be getting with that money it's becoming more and more attractive as I consider my next upgrade and downsizing a bit on it.

Well I have to hand them one thing, it looks a damn sight better than the other Fermis. At least it doesn't have that stupidly small fan on it. It actually looks pretty nice. A shame about the power consumption though. A mid range card needing two power connectors is a bit over the top. Not worth it in my opinion. I'd get a 5770. The looks better than the 5770, but the 5770 is the better card.

In both cases these little gems are only capable of running DirectX 9.0c level graphics. Now, obviously, there are some exceptions to this but that is all they are really. Until the consoles are able to implement DX10/DX11 level graphics this is pretty much going to be the situation we are in where we get a handful of titles that have these features while the majority of them are nothing more that ports of a title released on the console.

Myself, for various different reasons, I'm slowly moving towards a console for my gaming needs since I'm having a more and more diffcult time justifying spending the levels of money I am on a system that I get like maybe 3 games a year if I'm lucky that make it worth it. When I consider all of the other firearm related goodies I could be getting with that money it's becoming more and more attractive as I consider my next upgrade and downsizing a bit on it.

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That is so true. There are a few things from newer DX versions which they can try to simulatye (I believe the Xenos has hardware tesselation support, but I'm probably wrong), but the main thing that dictates console ports is just how miserably powered they are. We can now pack (EDIT: 10x) the amount of transistors in the die, and then we also have other technological improvements.

Consoles technically have beaten PC gaming not by being better than PCs, rather by being too crap to keep up with PCs, making PC games no hard enough of modern systems. Crysis 2 will fail. Hard.

ok so it matches the 260, (which is what I said) but is slower than it by a bit because of the memory. Judging by how fast the 465 falls down as the resolution increases - compared to the 285 - i am going to venture and say that this will fall down in pretty much the same way. Hence, realistically it will lag behind in some games vs. a 260 216.

now... a 260 retailed for about $240 Nov-Dec of 2008 ... which is why this card is a fail. I mean srsly... same price, same power consumption, same performance... its basically a really power-hungry 5770 with less ram.

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Well I was saying quite the opposite. ROPs and memory is almost completely irrelevant. GTX260 was not slower because of the ROPs (not until 2560x1600 4xAA at least.), but because of shader power. The GTX275, which has exactly the same ROPs as the 260 can testify this by being almost 20% faster than the 260 and being only slightly shy of performance of the 285, 8800GT was a good example too. I made a chart some time ago that demostrated that performance on Nvidia depended solely of shader power, at least at 1920x1200 4xAA, and if you do the math on latest Wizzard's review you will see this is the same with GTX4xx (and still is for GTX2xx). ROPs and memory will always have some effect on maximum lowest frames but average is not going to change much, nor will change the median low value. Average framerates depend completely on shader power or maybe texture units. Imposible to tell, because SPs and TMUs are tied in Nvidia's architecture. Either way GF104 has a lot to win against the GTX465, because GF104 has more TMUs per cluster than GF100 according to rumors.

On top of that, I still have the impression that GF104 could be seen more like a GT200 with 50% more shaders than a crippled GF100. The rumor mill says that Nvidia calls GF104 the next 8800GT and that partners are eagerly awaiting it as the messiah. I don't think the chip that is being picturedin this thread would arise those feelings. Don't let the GTX460 name fool any of you, names can change almost 1 day before launch. And if you had (conspiracy theory ahead ):

1- a chip that went wrong like GF100 and that was delayed
2- enough time to make a redesign. remember that the 8800gt-like redesign has always been the plan. it was with G92, it was with the cancelled GT200 refresh and it's always been with GF104. the work on the refresh starts months if not years prior to the launch of the original chip.
3- a competitor that seems to be one step ahead of you.

wouldn't you:

1- work on a slightly different architecture: we at least know (rumors, granted) that GF104 is based on 24 SP clusters and has more TMUs per cluster.
2- hide it from your competitor
3- play with the names: pretty much like... how do we name the second Fermi SKU? 460 as always. wait no name it 470! 460 is now 470? yes but there's another card and it's 465? 465!!?? why not 460? because there's a 460, in fact, this one based on another chip and it's 192bit or 256bit, so what does everybody think? clearly inferior...

But is it so clearly inferior? Well at this point it's pretty clear it will have 336 (8800GT sucessor) and 384 SPs (8800GTS sucessor) so it is going to be inferior to the full Fermi aka 480, but it doesn't have to be necessarily much slower, just like G92 was not clearly inferior to G80. That it's going to be 192 and 256 bit, we do know, but so is Cypress. GF100 based cards use very slow GDDR5 memory especially the lower SKUs. At 4800 Mhz it has enough bandwidth to be as fast as the HD5870 and if shaders work as well as in GT200 (remember that SP number per cluster went back to 24), it will also have the shader power: 50% increase on shaders over GT200 minus some inneficiencies = enough to reach the the level of Cypress* which is 25% faster than GTX285. It will mainly depend on texture units tbh. If they have been increased back to the same amount found on GT200, we might have a winner.

I know it's pure speculation and maybe of the bad one, but everybody expects the worst and I always love showing the other angle of things. Just some food for thought and discussion material.

* I said Cypress because I wanted to talk about the gap between 470 and 480, like 8800GT was between 8800GTS 640 and the GTX. I find that saying Cypress level is easier than "gap between 470 and 480", not because I want to imply it will be faster than Cypress, althoug I'm aware it's the same thing. <- I swear I understand what I mean with this.

This time I disagree that 460 will be crap, actually, I think it's gonna be a very good card.

Following Nvidia's tendency of filling gaps left by ATi, the 460 will probably perform between 5770 and 5830, being closer to the latter. Reading some specs, the 460 would have 56 TMU's, the same 470 has but certainly the ROP count (more than memory) will cripple it somehow.

Coming from Nvidia, I think the price is OK, of course it could've been cheaper but you must pay for DX11 and Nvidia's exclusives.

The G92 was a die shrink of G80, but it had a slightly altered memory bus. G80 had a 384 bit bus whereas G92 had a 256 bit bus. In terms of performance, the G92 made up for the loss in memory bus by being able to clock the core and shaders higher, and higher memory clocks made up for the drop.

This time I disagree that 460 will be crap, actually, I think it's gonna be a very good card.

Following Nvidia's tendency of filling gaps left by ATi, the 460 will probably perform between 5770 and 5830, being closer to the latter. Reading some specs, the 460 would have 56 TMU's, the same 470 has but certainly the ROP count (more than memory) will cripple it somehow.

Coming from Nvidia, I think the price is OK, of course it could've been cheaper but you must pay for DX11 and Nvidia's exclusives.

Well, that's my bet

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but the fact is you can get HD 5830 around $220 - $190, and if this thing perform between HD 5770 and HD 5830 then its even more pointless because HD 5830 performance was closer to HD 5770 so by your logic GTX 460 will be easy beaten by Oced HD 5770 and cost less, lower power consumption.

so if Nvdia can't come with better performance (at least on par or better than HD 5830), then it will be hard for this card to compete with HD 5770, because of it inefficient design (more expensive, higher power consumption).

just for the simple reason that console gaming is much more cheaper and reliable than PC.

as long as Nvidia and ATI release cards with expensive prices, consoles will continue to be better and cheaper than PC.

I think that by the release of PS4 and Xbox720, PC gaming will just die.

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Better, I doubt it. I don't like playing a game with any form of lag. Most of the best games on consoles have terrible lag, and no matter how cheap the console is, it doesn't make it worth it if your gaming experience is ruined by it running like poo.

And consoles aren't really cheaper or more reliable. You can build a PC for the same price as say a PS3 and play the games the PS3 does, and you can listen to music while playing and not need to play only select games, you have internet, Linux, anything you want and it is all for the same price as the PS3 and best of all, Sony hasn't made it how they want it. Consoles will never be better than PCs. They are killing PC gaming only by being too crap compared to PCs.

PC gaming will never die. Unless console users want to put up with TDPs of over 500W, the console will never have the performance of a desktop computer, and there are plenty of gamers out there who will agree with me that they won't sacrifice functionality and performance just for something cheaper (which will undergo 5 revisions before it's deemed to be a final product).

This time I disagree that 460 will be crap, actually, I think it's gonna be a very good card.

Following Nvidia's tendency of filling gaps left by ATi, the 460 will probably perform between 5770 and 5830, being closer to the latter. Reading some specs, the 460 would have 56 TMU's, the same 470 has but certainly the ROP count (more than memory) will cripple it somehow.

Coming from Nvidia, I think the price is OK, of course it could've been cheaper but you must pay for DX11 and Nvidia's exclusives.

Well, that's my bet

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well going by every other card in the GTX4XX series this card should have a max of 32 tmu's and 24 rops, I think this card will trade blows with the GTX260 and but if they can pull off a core clock of 675mhz then this will be right behind the GTX465, it will actually have more shader power than the GTX465 but the raster will be a little lower, if it really does have 32 tmu's and a 675mhz core clock, this card could even be faster than the GTX465 even including the memory bottleneck.

but the fact is you can get HD 5830 around $220 - $190, and if this thing perform between HD 5770 and HD 5830 then its even more pointless because HD 5830 performance was closer to HD 5770 so by your logic GTX 460 will be easy beaten by Oced HD 5770 and cost less, lower power consumption.

so if Nvdia can't come with better performance (at least on par or better than HD 5830), then it will be hard for this card to compete with HD 5770, because of it inefficient design (more expensive, higher power consumption).

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If you consider 5770 OC capability, don’t forget that 460 will have the same chance and if it overclock as well as 465 then it’ll dominate an OCed 5770 anytime. I expect a big deal of the 460 but I’m not that optimistic as some people believe GF104 would be the next G92. I assume it’ll be a good performer with a more reasonable wattage and temp operation.

i want a midrange card. a 5850 costs $500 in here whereas a 5830 costs $400 in here.

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I'm curious where do you live man?

If you're talking about US dollars, both cards are pretty expensive. I live in a third world country where a GTX285 still costs around US$475 so I understand you. Luckly you can buy on the internet, sometimes even with duty taxes added you can get reasonable prices.

But if your only options are those you give then I'd say you should think about your gaming needs first. If you play or intend to play games in DX10 mode mostly, you could get a 4890 or a GTX275, probably if you find them, they could be cheaper than current generation and they'll deliver a very good performance in DX10. If you game using low resolutions, let's say 1280x800 for example, you could buy a 5770 and surely you'll be satisfied with that. But if you play beyond 1680x1050, you want to give DX11 a try and 5850/5830 are your options, you should take into consideration this:

Normally, a 5850 is 25% faster than 5830 then if we begin with 5830 price at $400, the logic price result for a 5850 would be $500 (400*1.25). In your specific case, both cards are adequately positioned in terms of price/performance. Therefore the choice is indistinct, you should buy a 5850 if you have the money and want to get more power.

how about a heavily overclocked 5830? i heared that some versions of 5830 can overclock to 1ghz core and can get very close to a stock 5850.

if that would be the case then what???

and i want to game at 1600*1200 res with 4AA and no AF.

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1GHz? that's unlikely unless you do some voltage tweaking. But let's suppose you can get a 5830 to perform closer to a stock 5850, you'll have the same dilemma cause you could also overclock the 5850 to get the power of a stock 5870. Practically in that case, the price/performance ratio wouldn't vary that much.